


no grave can hold my body down

by briony_larkin



Series: if we go down, then we go down together [1]
Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Person, I'm Sorry, Kinda, Reincarnation, an unholy amount of ocs also, it didnt start out as fanfiction, what do i tag this???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9692510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briony_larkin/pseuds/briony_larkin
Summary: there is a space between, where the long-dead, newly-dead, and not-really-dead can interact, but only if the universe or whatever you want to call it wills it. anne finds herself in such a place.aka here is the trash everyone it is right the heck here





	

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so this is.... idek what, exactly. it didn't start out as fanfiction, it started as me trying to use writing to work through some real life stuff (long story), which is why it's still in first person pov which sucks, i know. also it's probably terrible and totally unedited bc it is one in the morning, i'm looking at five hours of sleep max, and totally sleep-drunk, so i went, "here, ao3, take the trash."
> 
> minor edits 1/13/18

She stands at the window, an almost imperceptible breeze weaving through her hair, blowing black against the snow. The shapeless gray dress she wears floats around her ankles. The only thing she wears aside from the dress is the blood-red ribbon around her neck. I am wearing a deep red dress. My gray ribbon is tied through my chestnut hair, keeping it out of my face. Nothing touches my neck. I can't hardly bear the feeling of anything touching my neck, no, not now. I step forward and take her hand, and we stand there, two girls named Anne, born almost five hundred years apart, watching their loves with someone else.

"What was it?" I ask her, voice low and hoarse, from pain or exhaustion, neither of us know. "What did we change? What was different at the end than the beginning?"

A half-smile twists her lips, simultaneously bitter and resigned. "After all these years, we're all still so similar, aren't we? And yet I still think I never changed anything. I always was who I am. I hate to blame him, and yet..."

"Yet wasn't it all his fault?"

"I think so, sometimes. He used to love that once I wanted him, really wanted him, I was eager, excited, happy, to love him and show him my love. Then he could never stand my touch at the end." She turns to face me and her black eyes pierce my soul.

"I know." I look away from her to disguise the lump in my throat. "He told me--" and oh, it's so hard to continue, now that I cannot believe my stupidity, my naivete-- "he told me it wasn't like kissing any other girl, that he liked my enthusiasm." I do not see her sympathetic smile, my eyes trained on the ground, but it is like I can feel it. "Did he lie?" I ask tremulously, and I despise my voice for shaking.

"No." It is soft and gentle, but firm and final. "At least," she says tenderly, forgiveness in every syllable, "not on purpose. He has never known what he truly wants. He has had everything. All he knows is what is out of reach, and the very idea is unbearable. and so he reaches, he stretches, and he climbs on others if he must, until he has that which was once unattainable. But he never does know what to do with it. Now, it has lost its appeal."

"Is that all we were? Toys dangled out of their reach?"

She cannot bear to look at me any longer. Instead, she stares resolutely out the window as though it will hurt less. "I cannot believe that, either. I think he, they, loved me, you, us."

I can't help the poisonous, derisive laugh that bubbles up and burns my throat.

She gives me a quelling look. "I have had hundreds of years to think about this and I know things you do not."

Her words are not kind, but neither are they cruel or rebuking, simply matter-of-fact.

"We were the first, you know, me and Henry. I know because there was no one here to greet me, but I have watched everyone since through the window."

"Does Henry...? Is he...?" I cannot finish my question but she understands.

"I don't know. All I have seen of him for half a millennium is the memory of him that appears side-by-side with his current incarnation. I do not know if he wishes to talk to me, but I suspect that even if he did, he cannot." Her face whitens even further and I wonder if this is the first time she's ever had to acknowledge this aloud.

She shakes herself and continues. "I believe that we were meant to be." Her face twists in disgust and she scoffs. "That sounds ridiculous. I'm sorry. But I think that when he made his decision and allowed me to be murdered, he changed something, or sinned, perhaps, if you believe in the concept, and it must not go unfixed. We live and die again and again until we have a different ending to our story, until one of us rights some grievous wrong."

"Why?"

"I've asked myself that question for a long time but nothing has ever answered. It could be simply because my murder," her lips twist at the words like they taste sour, "like I said, broke something that needs fixed, or," and her words are not lemons now, they are rosewater, sweet and light, "maybe, the universe decided we deserved a second, third, fourth, fifth chance."

I snatch my hand from hers like she burned me. My breath catches in my throat and it feels like I'm choking. "So I," my voice breaks, "am nothing on my own. All I am," I spit, "is you!"

"No!" she cries. "No, of course you aren't!"

"Really?" I say scathingly, eyebrows raised. "With all the 'incarnation' stuff, you want me to believe that we are not the same?"

"My doe, my dear, my darling," she steps forward and places a hand on my cheek, "think about it! If we were truly the same person, or perhaps spirit is a more accurate term, how could I possibly talk to you like this?"

I cross my arms. "Maybe you're just a residual... thing... in my brain. Maybe you're a figment of my imagination."

"No," she says firmly. "I am my own spirit and you are yours."

Pain etches itself into every line of my expression. "Then what is this?" I demand.

"Well," she says thoughtfully, "I have always thought of it like casting a part in a play."

"A play?"

"Yes. We are similar. I like to think that perhaps our souls were composed of the same star's dust, or came out of the same recycled galaxy, that we are as close to sisters as is possible for souls. But like actors in a play, we have the same part and play it similarly, but we are our own and we have different qualities that we lend to our parts."

I think about it for a minute, then say, "That's better, but I'm not sure I understand."

A wry laugh tears itself from her throat. "I do not quite understand it either, believe me."

Finally, I steel my spine, gather my courage, and ask the question that has pressed itself upon me since I opened my eyes in this place. "Why am I here?"

She sighs, a soft puff of air leaving her red lips in a perfect "o" shape. "That's the big question isn't it?"

A sudden horror overtakes me and I feel my heart beat in my throat when I ask, "I'm not dead, am I?"

"No! No, my darling, you are not dead. In fact," she laughs a little, breathless, and the laugh seems to quiver in the air, afraid of its own existence, "not being dead is likely the most compelling reason for you to be here. Yes, every girl has come here eventually. And all of them before you had died by the time they came here."

"Why not me?"

She tucks a strand of black hair behind her ear and pauses. "The next girl after me was named Isabelle. After her came Angelica, then Evelyn, then Margaret, then Mary, then Elizabeth. you are the first girl since me to share my name. Likewise, your Henry is the only other that has been named Henry. Perhaps it is not much of a sign, but since the beginning, I have thought that perhaps this signified the end of all of this. Either we may finally be together, or we will forever be apart. We are out of chances.”

A note of finality rings in her final words, and something inside me calls out in response to it. I believe her.

The scene (memory) of her Henry with Jane disappears and a new image is called up.

I cannot help the sob that tears out of me when I see myself, so deathly pale, lying motionless in a hospital bed. Nothing is colored, just black and white. White is the sheets, the bed frame, my skin. Black is my hair that looks darker than it usually does, my eyelashes against my cheekbones, and the finger bruises around my throat.

It wasn't Henry it wasn't Henry wasn't Henry wasn't Henry “WASN'T!”

The last word bursts from me and she looks at me, slightly alarmed.

“It wasn't him,” I insist, voice choked. Pools form in my eyes. “I know. I know it wasn't him.”

She pulls me gently against her and runs her hands up and down my back. “Shhh, darling, stop shaking.”

I didn't realize I was.

“I know, sweetheart, I know. I can see it all, remember? I know.”

_She knows._

That knowledge fills me with a cold, calm clarity. I finally do stop shaking. “Who was it?”

She sighs and I have to step back away from her so she will not hear my huff of annoyance. Why can't she stop _fucking_ doing that?!

“Remember, love, that your, our death is always his, their fault.”

Hysteria tints my voice an ugly, sickly green. “But it wasn't him! I know it wasn't! You said it wasn't him!”

“No, it wasn't him,” she soothes, and she grasps my shoulders.

I tear away from her. “Then who was it?!”

She takes a deep breath and tilts her head to the side, considering how best to phrase this. “You've never gotten along with him, you know. He dislikes the things and ideas you tell Henry to support almost as much as he dislikes having less influence on someone who easily has the potential to become the most powerful person in the world.”

“No,” I whisper. I shake my head and step back. It could not possibly have been...

“He saw your relationship with Henry... What's the phrase? On the rocks? He saw the way Henry looked at Jane, who he thinks is not much for politics and more easily manipulated. Murder was not his first inclination, but once he realized you were pregnant, he knew Henry would discard Jane and come back to you. Then your position in his heart would be sealed. He would put in effort to heal your relationship, and you would forever be his top advisor.” Her eyebrows raise. “Funny, how the fate of women always seems to depend on their children.”

A single tear leaves its shiny track on my face. “I didn't tell Henry. I meant to, but he didn't want to talk, he just wanted to fight, and I didn't know if I wanted a baby, and it would have only been a fight.”

She cradles my cheek with her hand and wipes the wetness from my face. “I know. It's alright, darling, I know.”

I breathe deep and pull myself together. “So Thomas Cromwell strangled me.”

“Well,” she says with bitter humor, “he arranged for it, anyway. Heaven forbid he dirty his hands with the work he commands others to do for him.” She looks back at my body, small and frail in the hospital bed, and shakes her head. “Such an inelegant method, too. Cromwell will be disappointed.

“But if I am not dead, then why am I here?”

“Because,” she says, eyes boring into mine, “you have a choice.”

My eyebrows draw together. I think I know what she means, but I am not sure that I want to.

“I told you that you are not dead. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you are not dead yet. You can let go. If you do, you will stay here.”

I look around, and for the first time, I realize that there are rooms all around us, that far from this room simply being an indistinct place, it is part of a mansion, a castle.

“Yes,” she says, “All of the other girls are here too. I cannot tell you much about what death is like, not until you die, but I can tell you that it will be peaceful. We are happy here. I cannot promise you that if you go back. Happiness and peace are not guaranteed parts of mortal life.”

“If I stay here, I will be happy and peaceful.”

“Yes.”

“What about Henry?”

A rueful smile graces her lips. “I don't know. We may be able to see them, we may not. I do not know.”

“And if I go back?”

“Well,” she says softly, “I am not sure of that, either. I have thought that, perhaps, if you manage to break the cycle, stop the pattern...” She trails off then shakes herself. “Well, I suppose the point of all of this is that nothing is certain.” She graces me with a smile, a fragile, beautiful thing.

“I can let go,” I whisper. “I could... die.” There’s a finality in the word that I don’t like. It simply doesn’t feel right. “Or,” my voice grows a little bit stronger, “I could go back. I could go back and _live_.” The word rushes out of me on an exhaled breath, full of greenery and flora, water and light, fire and stars and darkness.

“Yes,” she says, “you can.” Fondness shines from her eyes. She knows what I have decided.

“I need to go back.”

“I know, darling.” Her hand stretches out and cups my cheek, then moves down toward my neck, and she pulls me into a hug.

We stay like that, joined together for the longest time, until she releases me and says, “Go.”

I consider asking where, exactly, I am supposed to go, but the instant the question enters my mind, I know the answer as surely as if someone had been standing there, speaking to me. Slowly but certainly, hand outstretched, I move toward the window. The glass ripples as my hand slips through it. It’s a distinct feeling, cool, smooth, like passing through water. My hand connects with my own, physical hand, and it’s a bolt of lightning, of sharp bright heat. I am pulled through the window now, faster and faster. My soul and body are nearly unified again.

Before my head is tugged through the glass, I turn back to look at her. She smiles and sends me a feeling of distinct warmth, love, and hope. I can hear the words like she said it.

_You will be fine. We’ll keep watching and cheering you on, but you don’t need it. You’ll be fine._

Head held high, I allow myself to leave behind the little room.

Being pulled back into my body all the way feels even more shocking than the first touch. I feel as though I am gasping for breath; it’s been forced out of me. I take a minute to breathe. My hands clench and unclench on the bed sheets. I take one last breath.

My eyes fly open.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if so inclined, unless ur gonna be a jerk. then screw right off.
> 
> but @ everyone who actually reads this piece of crap first person ridiculousness, ily


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